She is the living image of the poor dead one.

I worship her! and this feeble ray of happiness these wretched people disturb with their calumnies.

It is enough to make one kill them!" Overcome by the happy recollection of the spring-time which had flowered during the first years of his episcopate, far away in an Andalusian diocese, he repeated once again to Tomasa the tale of his relations with a certain devout lady, who from her childhood had felt a horror of the world.

Devotion had drawn them together, but life was not long in asserting her rights, opening herself a way by their almost mystical relations, and finally uniting them in a carnal embrace.

They had lived faithful to each other in the secrecy of ecclesiastical life, loving each other with scrupulous prudence, so that no rumour of their relations had ever publicly transpired, until she died, leaving two children.